Hun Sen was educated at a Buddhist monastery in Phnom Penh. In the late 1960s he joined the Communist Party of Kampuchea and in 1970 joined the Khmer Rouge. During the regime of Pol Pot (1975–79), when an estimated two million Cambodians lost their lives, Hun Sen fled to Vietnam, joining troops there opposed to the Khmer Rouge. He returned to Cambodia after the Vietnamese installed a new government in 1979 and was made minister of foreign affairs. He became prime minister in 1985.

In 1993 elections the royalist party of Prince Norodom Ranariddh, the son of head of state King Norodom Sihanouk, outpolled Hun Sen’s Cambodian People’s Party (CPP). Hun Sen, however, refused to cede power, and, under an agreement imposed by international powers, a coalition government was formed, with the prince named first prime minister and Hun Sen second prime minister. In a violent coup in July 1997 Hun Sen deposed Prince Ranariddh, who had made overtures to remnants of the Khmer Rouge, and appointed a replacement. In March 1998 Hun Sen had the prince tried in absentia and found guilty of charges that included an attempt to overthrow the government. Prince Ranariddh was subsequently pardoned by his father, and he returned to Cambodia to take part in elections held in July 1998. That time Hun Sen outpolled the prince, but once again the two were forced to enter into a coalition government, with Prince Ranariddh made president of the National Assembly and Hun Sen becoming the sole prime minister. In the national election of 2003, the CPP once again finished first, and Hun Sen was appointed to another term as prime minister in July 2004.

In the parliamentary elections of 2008, the CPP again emerged victorious, with three-fourths of the assembly seats, and Hun Sen entered yet another term as Cambodia’s prime minister. The opposition Sam Rainsy Party (SRP) comprised nearly all of the remaining members. In the 2013 elections, however, the CPP barely won a majority of seats in the chamber, with the newly formed opposition Cambodian National Rescue Party (CNRP)—created through the merger of the SRP and another party—gaining the remainder of the seats. The CNRP members protested the election’s outcome and boycotted the assembly, precipitating a constitutional crisis that was not resolved until mid-2014. Throughout that time Hun Sen remained prime minister and continued in office once an agreement had been reached between the CPP and CNRP.

Several decades after the fall of the Khmer Rouge, Hun Sen continued to grapple with fostering national reconciliation and prosecuting the surviving members of the Pol Pot regime for war crimes. The United Nations sought to bring the perpetrators to justice before an international tribunal, but Hun Sen insisted on relying on the Cambodian court system. The first judgement against a defendant—a guilty verdict—came only in 2010. Other pressing issues concerned development of the country’s economy, improvement of infrastructure, and management of an ongoing border dispute with Thailand—the latter finally resolved in 2013 following a ruling favourable to Cambodia by the International Court of Justice.

This article was most recently revised and updated by Kenneth Pletcher, Senior Editor.

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